by Otto Penzler
He paused, thought. Then, “Where’s Doran and Rigallo?”
“Stepped out about eleven. Down at Jerry’s, shooting pool. Should I flag ‘em?”
“No.”
MacBride turned on his heel, entered his office and kicked shut the door. He sat down, bit off the end of a cigar, and lit up. He hoped everything was all right. Poor kid—baby three months old—Haggerty Alley—eyes like Jimmy’s. Bah! He was getting sentimental. Did a man get sentimental at forty?
The door opened. Kennedy, of the Free Press, drifted in. A small, slim man, with a young-old face, and the whimsical, provocative eyes of the wicked and wise.
“Cold, Mac. Got a drink?”
MacBride pulled open a drawer. “Help yourself.”
Kennedy hauled out a bottle of Dewar’s and poured himself a stiff bracer—downed it neat. He slid onto a chair, coat collar up around his neck, and lit a cigarette. The cigarette bobbed in one corner of his mouth as he said:
“Anything new about this trucking feud?”
“Not a thing.”
Kennedy smiled satirically. “The Colonial Trucking Company versus the Atlas Forwarding Corporation. Hot dog!”
“Take another drink and breeze, Kennedy.”
“Cold out. Warm here. Say, Mac, look here. What chance has the Colonial against the Atlas when the Atlas is owned—oh, privately, sure!— by the Mayor? Funny, how those inspectors swooped down on the Colonial’s garage last week and condemned five trucks as unfit for service and unsafe to be on the public highways. Ho— protecting the dear, sweet public! D’you know the Atlas is worth five million dollars?”
“Shut up, Kennedy!”
“Funny, how that driver was shot at last week. He was going to tell something. Then he turned tail. Who threatened him? Or was he paid? The new State’s Attorney, good chap, could get only negative replies out of him. Hell, the guy got cold feet! Then he disappeared. This State’s Attorney is ambitious—too clean for this administration. He’ll get the dirty end, if he doesn’t watch his tricks. So will a certain police captain.”
MacBride bit him with a hard stare. Kennedy was innocently regarding the ceiling.
“Some day,” he went on, “or some night, one of these drivers isn’t going to get cold feet. I pity the poor slob!”
Sergeant Flannery blundered in, full of news.
“Brunner just rang in. Found the truck. Turned upside down in a gully ‘longside Farm-ingville Turnpike. Milk cans all over the place. Driver pinned underneath. Brunner can’t get him out, but he says the guy’s dead. He’s sent for a wrecking crew, nearest garage. Farm-ingville Turnpike, two miles west of Bingham Center.”
MacBride was on his feet, a glitter in his windy blue eyes. Haggerty Alley—eyes like Jimmy’s. Hell!
“Haul out Hogan,” he clipped, “and the flivver.” He buttoned his coat, banged out into the central room, fists clenched.
Kennedy was at his elbow. “Let’s go, Mac.”
“It’s cold out, Kennedy,” said MacBride, granite-faced.
“Drink warmed me up.”
No use. You couldn’t shake this news-hound. Prying devil, but he knew his tricks.
Outside, they bundled their coats against the ice-fanged wind, and waited.
The police flivver came sputtering out of the garage, and the two men hopped in.
MacBride said, “Shoot, Hogan!”
II
HAVE you ever noticed how people flock to the scene of an, accident, a man painting a flagpole, or a safe being lowered from a ten-story window?
MacBride cursed under his breath as, the flivver rounding a bend on Farmingville Turnpike, he saw up ahead dozens of headlights and scores of people. A bicycle patrolman was directing traffic, and the flivver’s lights shone on his bright buttons and shield. Automobiles lined either side of the road. People moved this way or that. One pompous old fellow, with a squeaky voice, remarked that truck drivers were reckless anyhow, and served him right for the spill.
MacBride stopped on the way by, glared at the man. “Did you see this spill?”
“No—oh, no, no!”
“Then shut your trap!”
The captain was thinking of Haggerty Alley, and his tone was bitter. He moved on, and Motorcycle Patrolman Brunner materialized out of the gloom and saluted.
“Right down there, Cap. Guy’s dead, and the truck’s a mess. Can hardly see it from here.”
“How’d you spot it?”
“I went up and down this pike twice, and the second time I noticed how the macadam is scraped. The guy skid bad, and you can see the marks. Closed cab on the truck, and he couldn’t jump.”
“Wrecker here yet?”
“No—any minute, though. Hoffman’s handling traffic.”
“Give me your flashlight. Go out with Hoffman and get these cars moving.”
“Right.”
MacBride took the flash and started down the embankment. Kennedy, huddled in his overcoat, followed. The way was steep, cluttered with boulders, blanched bushes; and as they descended, they saw turned earth and split rocks, where the truck had taken its headlong tumble.
Then they saw the truck, a twisted heap of wood and metal. A ten-ton affair, boxed like a moving van. But the truck had crashed head-on into a huge boulder, and the radiator, the hood, the cab and the cargo were all jumbled together. And somewhere beneath this tangled mass lay the driver.
Kennedy sat down on a convenient stump and lit a cigarette. MacBride walked around the wreck, probing with his flashlight. The beam settled on an arm protruding from beneath the snarled metal. Bloody—the blood caked by the cold.
He snapped out the flash, stood alone in the chill darkness, quivering with suppressed rage. The wind, whistling across the open fields, flapped his coat about his legs. Probably that girl was still sitting up, with her slippered feet in the oven of the kitchen stove, and her wide, sad eyes fixed on the clock. Brutal thing, death. It not only took one, but stung others. He wondered if there were any insurance, and thought not. Good thing, insurance. He carried twenty thousand, double indemnity, in case of accident. Could a guy in the Second Precinct die any other way but through an accident? Or was getting a slug in your back by a coked wop, death from natural causes?
A broad beam of light leaped down into the rocky gully.
“Wrecker,” said Kennedy.
MacBride nodded, watched while several men came weaving down the slope.
“Cripes!” muttered one, upon seeing the wreck.
Another said, “Hell, Joe, we can never haul this out. Need a derrick.”
“Well,” said MacBride, “you’ve got axes.
Hack away enough junk so you can get the man out.”
MacBride stood back, hands in pockets, chin on chest. Axes flashed, rang. Crow-bars heaved, grated.
Brunner came down and said, “Morgue bus just came, Cap.”
They got the body out, and one of the men became sick at his stomach. Another—case-hardened—chuckled, said, “Hell, buddy, you should ha’ been in the war!” War! This was war—guerrilla warfare! War of intimidation!
They put a blanket over the dead man, laid him on a stretcher, carried him up over the hill and slid him into the morgue bus.
“I want the report as soon as possible,” MacBride said to the man from the morgue.
The bus roared off into the night.
MacBride and Kennedy climbed into the police flivver. It was a bleak, cold ride back to the precinct.
The captain, without a word, went straightway into his office, uncorked the bottle of Dewar’s and downed a stiff shot. He rasped his throat, stood staring into space.
Kennedy drifted in, espied the bottle, rubbed his hands together gingerly. “B-r-r! Cold out.”
MacBride turned, eyed him, then waved toward the bottle. “Go ahead.”
“Thanks, Mac.”
Alone, MacBride went out into the black, windy street, turned a corner, crossed the street and entered Haggerty Alley. He stopped before a drab,
three-story dwelling. Aloft, one lighted window stared into the darkness. He drummed his feet on the cold pavement, then suddenly pushed into the black hallway, snapped on his flash, and ascended the worn staircase.
Third floor. One lighted transom. He knocked. The door opened. That pale young face, wide, questioning eyes. Shoulders wrapped in a plaid shawl.
“Come … in.”
MacBride went in. Yes, the kitchen, and an old woman sitting before the open oven of the stove, and clothes drying on a line above the stove. Faded wallpaper, hand-me-down furniture, warped ceiling. Cracked oilcloth on the floor. Neat, clean—poverty with its face washed.
The girl knew. Oh, she knew! Her breath, bated for a long moment, rushed out.
“Is he … ?”
MacBride stood like an image of stone. “Yes. Bad wreck.”
She wilted, like a spring flower suddenly overcome by an unexpected frost. The old woman moved, extended a scrawny arm.
“Betty!”
The girl reeled, spun, and buried her face in her mother’s lap. The mother cradled her in ancient arms.
MacBride wanted to dash out. But he held his ground, and something welling from the depths of him melted the granite of his chiseled face. The old woman looked up, and though her eyes were moist, there was a certain grimness in her expression. Age is strong, mused MacBride. It meets fate with an iron jaw.
The old woman, looking at him, shook her head slowly, as if to imply that this was life, and we either died and left others to mourn, or mourned while others died.
MacBride put on his hat, backed toward the door, opened it softly. He bowed slightly, and without a word, departed.
He was a little pale when he reached the station-house. Doran and Rigallo, his prize detectives, and four or five reserves were hanging about the central room, and Kennedy, his coat collar still up to his ears, was leaning indolently against the wall and blowing smoke circles.
MacBride nodded to Doran and Rigallo and strode into his office. Kennedy tried to edge in but MacBride closed the door in his face. Doran hooked one leg over a corner of the desk and Rigallo stood jingling loose change in his pocket.
He said, “Trouble, eh, Cap?”
“Plenty!” MacBride bit off.
“Was the guy shot?”
“No telling yet. Too messed up to see. That’s the morgue’s job. We’ll get news soon. But I’m willing to bet my shirt the guy’s been done in. If he has, I’m going to bust loose and drive the Atlas Corporation to the wall.”
Doran grunted. “Fine chance, with that bum of a mayor back of it. How the hell did he ever get in?”
“Don’t be dumb,” said Rigallo “That last election was a farce. All the polls in the Fourth and Fifth wards were fixed. Guys voted twice, and the polls committee scrapped a lot of votes for the opposition because of some lousy technicality—illegibility, unreadable signatures and all that crap. Who votes in this city? The better element yap at conditions and turn up their noses and don’t even go near the polls. The bums, the bootleggers, the blockheads and gunmen vote! And the New Party sends loud-mouthed guys to ballyhoo the mill and river bohunks during lunch-hour, and under-cover guys go around near the employment agencies, the bread-lines, and the parks. They find guys out of work and up against it, and they slip ‘em a ten-dollar bill to vote. The Atlas Corporation employs eight hundred men, and they vote right or lose their jobs, and their wives, mothers and the whole damned family are dragged to the polls. Now d’you wonder why we have this bum of a mayor?”
MacBride said, “Sounds like Kennedy.”
“It is,” replied Rigallo. “Kennedy and I have the whole thing thrashed out.”
The telephone rang. MacBride picked it up, muttered his name, and listened. When he put the instrument down, he sucked in his breath and curled his lip.
“Poisoned,” he said. “Saunders, the driver, was poisoned. A stuff that he could drink and it wouldn’t have any effect for an hour. Then it hits a man like a stroke of paralysis. That’s how it hit Saunders.”
Doran said, “Must have stopped at a road-house for a snifter and got poisoned liquor.”
“Just that,” nodded MacBride. “I’ll find that roadhouse. Some pup is going to hang for this, just as sure as God made little green apples!”
“Remember, Cap, the mayor,” put in Doran.
MacBride doubled his fist. “I’ll bring it right to his doorstep if I have to, and I’d like to see the bum try to can me. I’m sick and tired of these conditions! I’m going to put a dent in the Atlas Corporation, and wipe out this graft, this dirty, rotten corruption.”
“They’ll bump you off, Mac.”
“I’ll take the chance! I’m insured for twenty thousand, and my plot in the cemetery is paid for!”
It took a tough man to run the Second.
III
NEXT day the noon edition of the Free Press gave the wreck and the death of Saunders a frontpage column. It recited the details in its customary offhand manner, giving the place, the approximate time, name of the deceased, and financial loss. It wound up with the non-committal statement that the police were investigating the matter, but did not say why.
MacBride, reading it over his coffee, at his home in Grove Manor, was a little disgruntled at its apparently disinterested attitude. But, turning the pages, his eye rested on the editorial columns, and particularly on an item labeled,
CRIME-CORRUPTION
Crime. We’ve always had it. It is a disease, recurring every so often, like smallpox, diphtheria, and scarlet fever. It lays waste, like any and all of these diseases, and causes suffering, misery and despair.
And on the other hand, wealth, affluence, power. To whom? Why, to those, quite often in high place, who like parasites, feast avidly upon the meaty morsels gathered by vultures who swoop in the dark, kill from behind, and crow at the dawn.
What we need is a crusader. Not a preaching, scripture-quoting, holier-than-thou sort of fellow. Not an altruist, nor a gavel-thumper. But a Man, and we capitalize that symbolically. A man somewhere in the rusty machinery of this municipality, who cares not a whoop for authority and is willing to stack the possibility of losing his job against the possibility of sweeping out the unclean corridors of intrigue and corruption, and satisfying the ego of his own morals and ethics.
A two-fisted, slam-bang, tougher-than-thou sort of man! The streets of Richmond City are more sordid than its sewers. They smell to high heaven. We need a chunk of brimstone to sterilize them. Amen.
“Whew!” whistled MacBride. “This will cause apoplexy in the Town Hall. The Free Press is out to ride ‘em.”
He was back in his office at the precinct at one, and Kennedy was sound asleep in the swivel chair. He kicked it, and Kennedy awoke.
“Hello, Mac.”
“Hello. Pretty ripe, that editorial.”
“Thanks.”
MacBride looked at him. “You didn’t write it.”
“Yup. My name’ll go down in posterity.”
“If the Big Gang knew you did it, it would go down in the Deceased Column. Get out o’ that chair.”
Kennedy got out and sat on the desk, swinging his legs.
MacBride said, “I see, now, that you were shooting in my direction. Humph. Crusader!”
Kennedy smiled. “Would you, Mac.”
“I am,” snapped MacBride, “but there’s nothing of the crusader about me. I’m sore, and I’ll bust up this racket if it’s the last thing I do. That poor kid, Kennedy—her name’s Betty…. God Almighty! Government of the people, by the people and for the people! What a bromide!”
He pulled an empty cigar box from his desk, took a pen and a piece of paper, and on the paper printed, in large letters:
SPARE CHANGE, BOYS, FOR A HARD-HIT NEIGHBOR
This he pasted on the cover of the box, and said, “Dig down, Kennedy.”
He himself dropped in a couple of dollars, and Kennedy added another and some odd change. Then MacBride carried the box into the central room an
d placed it on the desk, where none might pass without seeing it.
Still in plain-clothes, he shook Kennedy, and walked down to River Street. He found the Colonial depot, and from a number of drivers learned that, on cold nights, they usually stopped at the Owl’s Nest, out beyond Bingham Center, on the pike, for a shot of rum. Reasoning that Saunders had lived, driven and drunk similarly, he took a trolley car to the outskirts of the city, alighted where Main crossed Farmingville Turnpike, and boarded an outbound bus.
It was a long ride, and they passed the shattered truck on the way. It still lay in the gully, but a derrick was at work, and one of the Colonial’s trucks was gathering up the remains. At four-thirty he left the bus, and stood regarding the Owl’s Nest. It stood well back off the highway, a low, rambling casino with many windows. The main entrance was decorated with colored light bulbs, but on one side was a sign, Delivery Entrance, and MacBride judged that this also was the logical entrance for truck-men in quest of a drink.
He pushed this door open and found himself in a hallway that turned sharply to the left. But directly in front of him was an open door leading into a small, shabby room containing two tables and a half dozen chairs, and a fly-specked electric light hanging from the ceiling.
MacBride sat down, and presently a man in shirt-sleeves entered.
“Rye highball,” said MacBride.
The man, large, beetle-browed, hairy-armed, looked him over, then shook his head. “No drinks here, buddy.”
“Tripe! I know.”
“Not here, buddy.”
“You the boss?”
“No.”
“Flag the boss.”
The man disappeared, and a few minutes later a short, fat, prosperous-looking man entered with a frown of annoyance. But the frown disappeared like a cloud and sunlight beamed.
“Oh, hello, Mac.”
“Didn’t know you ran this dump, Hen. Sit down.”
